Tuvia Bielski

Tuvia Bielski (8 May 1906-12 June 1987) was a Belarusian Jewish partisan who led the Bielski Otriad in a guerrilla war against Nazi Germany during World War II. During the war, he saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazis, hiding in the Lipczanska Forest.

Biography
Tuvia Bielski was born on 8 May 1906 in Stankiewicze, Congress Poland, Russian Empire to David and Beila Bielski, members of the only Jewish family in the village. During World War I, Bielski served as an interpreter for the Imperial German Army during its war against the anti-Semitic Russians, and Bielski used his knowledge of Yiddish to become fluent in the mutually intelligible German language, remembering the language for the rest of his life. In 1927, Bielski entered the Polish Army, and he married a wealthy woman named Rifka and moved to Subotniki, owning a general store and some mills. In 1939, the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland and threatened to persecute bourgeois men ike Bielski, so he fled to Lida, with his wife choosing to stay at home.

In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in Operation Barbarossa, overrunning much of the country. In August, the Germans liquidated the Jewish families of Stankiewicze, and Tuvia met up with his brothers Asael Bielski, Aron Bielski, and Zus Bielski in the Lipczanska Forest, where they used to hide from the police when they were younger. Bielski and his brothers intended to survive by themselves, but they eventually met up with more and more Jewish refugees, taking them in. The Bielski brothers formed the "Bielski Otriad", a resistance brigade of Jewish refugees, killing collaborators and German troops while protecting a growing group of Jewish refugees; the Jews would reach 1,200 people in 1942. Bielski avoided the Nazis and raided ghettoes to free some Jews, and the Bielskis hid in the forest until the war was over; Asael was killed while serving in the Red Army. After the war, Tuvia, Zus, and their families went to Israel, but they moved to the United States in 1956. The brothers ran a trucking company for 30 years, and Tuvia died in near poverty in 1987. He was later exhumed and taken to Israel, where he was buried with military honors.